RETIRED officers of the Nigeria Police Force on Monday, April 20, blocked the entrance of the Presidential Villa in Abuja, demanding that President Bola Tinubu assent to the Police Exit Bill passed by the National Assembly in December 2025.
According to Channels Television, the retirees, under the aegis of the Police Retired Officers Forum of Nigeria, said their protest was against the continued inclusion of the police in the Contributory Pension Scheme, which they described as illegal, fraudulent, inhumane and oppressive.
The Contributory Pension Scheme is a retirement savings system introduced by the Federal Government under the Pension Reform Act, where both employees and employers make monthly contributions into a Retirement Savings Account managed by Pension Fund Administrators.
The scheme was designed to ensure workers receive pensions after retirement, but many retired police officers have consistently complained of poor payouts, delays and hardship under the arrangement.
The ex-officers, led by their National Coordinator, Raphael Irowainu, retired chief superintendent of police, reportedly marched from the Three Arms Zone through the road in front of the Force Headquarters to the Presidential Villa.
They marched with placards, the Nigerian flag and the Nigeria Police Force flag, singing solidarity songs as they blocked Gate 8 leading into the Villa.
This was said to have caused disruption to vehicular movement as they insisted on seeing the President.
Security personnel at the Villa reportedly made efforts to persuade them to vacate the area, but the protesters stood their ground, insisting that they would not leave until their demands were addressed.
Addressing journalists, Irowainu said the protest was aimed at prevailing on Tinubu to sign the Police Exit Bill.
He said once signed into law, the bill would remove the Nigeria Police Force from what he described as a “slavery and untimely death-inducing pension scheme.”
“Our major aim here is to prevail on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to sign our bill – the bill exiting the police from the Contributory Pension Scheme – passed by the National Assembly on 4th December 2025 and transmitted to him on 16th March, 2026, into law, and nothing more than that.
“The soldiers have been exited, the SSS has been exited, the Air Force has been exited, the Navy has been exited, the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) has been exited. The police, who are the father of them all, are trapped in this obnoxious Contributory Pension Scheme,” Irowainu was quoted to have said.
This is not the first time retired officers have protested over the pension scheme.
They had on Monday, April 13, trooped to the Force Headquarters in Abuja to protest the handling of their pension.
While calling for an immediate exit from the Contributory Pension Scheme, the protesters expressed dissatisfaction with it and said scheme failed to meet their financial needs since they left active service.
Earlier, in July 2025, they staged a similar demonstration at the National Assembly, where many elderly retirees stood in the rain with placards and chanted anti-government songs while demanding their removal from the CPS.
Efforts to address the issue have been made at the legislative level. On October 22, 2025, the House of Representatives passed a bill seeking to remove the police from the CPS. The Nigerian Senate subsequently adopted the bill, raising hopes among retirees.
Mustapha Usman is an investigative journalist with the International Centre for Investigative Reporting. You can easily reach him via: musman@icirnigeria.com. He tweets @UsmanMustapha_M